Hell is empty.

This should have been good news. For eons, Kṣitigarbha, the bodhisattva who vowed never to accept enlightenment until every hell realm was vacant—has walked through the underworld with his staff and his patience, transforming souls one stubborn spirit at a time. It was supposed to take forever. That was rather the point.

But this morning, something unprecedented happened. The demons figured out a shortcut.

Hell is empty. The hells are empty. All of them. Even the ones with the creative torments that required engineering degrees.

Led by Malphas, the ambitious demon of construction who's tired of building torture devices, hell's workforce has discovered they can simply absorb negative karma directly from souls. No suffering required. No lengthy redemption process. Just instant karmic cleansing—like dry cleaning for the spiritually stained.

The hell realms have been transformed into the Karmic Absorption Collective, offering immediate relief from guilt, instant absolution, and same-day redemption services. Souls are lining up for their quick exit. Some are even considering committing more crimes just to get the treatment. The demons, swollen with absorbed karma, are becoming something else entirely.

Yama wants his judicial system back. The demons are literally bursting with other people's guilt. And Kṣitigarbha must confront them all with the hardest truth in the Mahayana canon: that taking away someone's suffering isn't the same as helping them transform it.

After all, compassion without wisdom is just enabling with better branding.